Senator Udoedehe @ 59: an authentic Akwa Ibom icon

I’m pleased to send my best wishes to one of the most prominent political leaders in Akwa Ibom State, our hero and icon, Senator John James Udoedehe, on the occasion of his 59th birthday today, November 9. Very few politicians in the state have his kind of statewide appeal, long shelf life and grassroots supports.

Yet, unlike most others, Udoedehe has never been mired in any corruption scandal and immoral conducts. Virtually all politicians in Akwa Ibom State belong to either a cult group or an cultic sect for power and influence. Senator Udoedehe has no such affiliation. His life has been devoted to his business, politics and public service. Until recently, he was the National Secretary of the APC.

 I have known Senator JJ, as his friends call him, closely for well over a decade, and I can attest to his sense of compassion and empathy for the most vulnerable segment of our people. He is driven by a strong desire to lift our people out of poverty and improve their living conditions. A man of a few passions, Udoedehe loves a good game of squash, adores his wife and family and worries constantly about the desperate poverty and the high unemployment in our state, and the fact that the core economic activities in Akwa Ibom state are controlled largely by non-Akwa Ibom people. 

‘’In the ‘60s and 70s, the richest group of people in this part of the country were from here, and they were mostly private businessmen. We had the Utuks, the Usoros, the Inyangettes and the rest. But it is so disheartening that despite the huge petro-dollars that has been flushing into the state since 2016, our people have been sinking deeper and deeper into grinding poverty… You’d be surprised to know that most the gleaming, new buildings that adorn our high streets in Uyo belong to non-indigenes.  Even in the adjoining villages, our people are busy selling off their ancestral and family lands to outsiders’, he said in a recent conversation we had at his home.

Senator Udoedehe is running for governor of Akwa Ibom on the platform of New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP). Many believe that he is the front runner in the race in which all the other two main candidates are steeped in scandals and debilitating legal battles. Udoedehe’s obsession with the welfare of our people is the reason he chose to visit all the 329 wards in the state as his campaign mode. ‘’I am more comfortable meeting and interacting with the ordinary people in their homes than the usual practice of carrying crowds in uniforms, T-shirts and Face caps from Uyo to campaign events at the Local Government Areas’’, he said, adding, ‘’and in our visits so far, we have seen how Akwa Ibom people are living in crushing poverty, inhuman deprivations and extreme helplessness. The government has failed these people, and I couldn’t help but apologize to them recently’’.

Udoedehe’s long political career and impactful public service has almost turned him into a permanent fixture in our subconscious. He was a Local Government Chairman at age 32; first elected Senator at 35 during the botched Abacha transition programme and reelected Senator at 37 in 1999. It was in the Senate that his love for his state shone through. He exploited his close relationship with President Obasanjo and worked with other senators for the abrogation of the onshore-offshore oil dichotomy. He did not allow his political differences with the sitting governor then to becloud his sense of duty to Akwa Ibom. Mr. Umana Okon Umana, Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, had in December told me of how Senator Udoedehe pulled all the strings in Abuja and got President Obasanjo to agree to pay Akwa Ibom our past-due derivation monies.

In 2006, Udoedehe was the Director General of the Godswill Akpabio Campaign Organization that facilitated the election of Akpabio as governor in April 2007. In return, Akpabio recommended him to President Yara’Adua for appointment as Minister.  But like many political partnerships in Nigeria, the minister and the governor soon fell out. Udoedehe left the PDP and moved into ACN in 2010 and was soon nominated its governorship candidate to challenge Akpabio who was then seeking a second-term election. What ensued was a titanic electoral battle reminiscent of the Awolowo-Akintola fight of 1960s in Western Nigeria. ACN won a House of Representatives seat and a few House of Assembly seats in what has become the best performance ever put up by an opposition party in the state since 1999. ‘’I won that election, but it was stolen from me’’, Udoedehe still insists till today.

 Twelve years after, in 2022, another Akpabio-Udoedehe feud led to Udoedehe’s defection from APC to NNPP. While NNPP quickly gave him a ticket to run for governor, APC has no governorship candidate because INEC declined to validate its primaries. Udoedehe’s defection with thousands of his supporters from APC has practically crippled the party in Akwa Ibom. A few key members still remaining in the party are planning to come together to endorse Udoedehe. ‘’APC has no governorship candidate in the state. Since Udoedehe was part of us until recently and he’s the best among all the governorship candidates, we shall have no option than to direct our members and supporters to vote for him during the elections’’, says Mr. Augustine Ekanem, APC State Chairman.

Senator Udoedehe is a leader of great indefatigability, born into a wealthy home whose father once sat on the board of the same company with the late Chief Ernest Shonekan. But for him, the wealthiest man is the one who shares love with the weak and the underprivileged. ‘’And that’s why I want to serve Akwa Ibom people as their governor’’, he told me, as he rushes into a meeting with party supporters in his expansive home a few days to his 59th birthday. Congratulations, Senator JJ and happy birthday, my brother.

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